Two Stars, One Role in 'Philadelphia, Here I Come!'

Christian Conn and Bernard Balbot are of two minds about the character of Gareth O’Donnell.

Christian Conn and Bernard Balbot play two aspects of the same character in the Asolo Repertory Theatre production of "Philadelphia, Here I Come!" DANIEL KELLY PHOTO/PROVIDED BY ASOLO REP

That’s understandable.

They each play different aspects of the young man from a small village in Northern Ireland in Brian Friel’s comedic drama “Philadelphia, Here I Come.”

Conn plays Public Gar, the one known to his family and friends, who keeps his thoughts and feelings locked tightly inside. Balbot plays Private Gar, the one bursting with enthusiasm, anger and all the other emotions that his public side can’t express for fear of their impact on himself and others.

Though they realize they may have seen each other at auditions in New York, the two actors didn’t meet until they arrived in Sarasota several weeks ago to begin rehearsals. They were excited about their roles, but also a little apprehensive.

“One of the concerns you have going in with two actors playing the same role is that you’ll have to come to some consensus on the same issues,” Conn said. “But that has gone away completely because what it actually is is you have another person informing your own performance. It’s not that we have to agree on a lot of things. I get a lot of information from Bernie. He’s the other half of my role, but it colors and enhances my own performance.”

Even though they’re playing the same person, they’re really two vastly different people.

Christian Conn and Douglas Jones are featured in the Asolo Repertory Theatre production of "Philadelphia, Here I Come!" DANIEL KELLY PHOTO/PROVIDED BY ASOLO REP

It’s like an exterior force and interior force on display at the same time, Balbot said. “It adds dimension to this muddy-watered character. For the audience, it’s interesting to watch why he is withholding information about what he really feels.”

Conn said actors have to know what their characters are pursuing in each scene and what they’re feeling at any given moment, at least internally. “I have that job taken care for me here,” he said. “My internal life is put down in text and another is speaking it, so you have layers that you’re not able to have in another performance.”

Balbot returns to Asolo Rep, where he played James Wilson, caster of the deciding vote on the Declaration of Independence, in last season’s musical “1776.” Conn makes his Asolo Rep debut.

The two actors head a cast that includes Douglas Jones as Gar’s father, S.B., Peggy Roeder as Madge Mulhern, David Breitbarth as the teacher Master Boyle, and Andrew Sellon, in his Asolo Rep debut, as the local priest. Amanda Lynn Mullen, one of several third-year FSU/Asolo Conservatory students in the production, plays Gar’s former girlfriend, Kate.

The production is staged by Frank Galati, who has streamlined the script into a relatively brief two-act play. (Asolo Rep last presented Friel’s play in the 1987-88 season.)

Galati said the play perfectly fits Asolo Rep’s five-year project to explore the American character.

“This is about a young person in the early 1960s, who emigrates to America, whose whole action as a character is about the American dream,” Galati said.

He had never seen nor read the show before reading a stack of scripts for potential productions for this season, and “it really completely hit me between the eyes. It’s a gorgeous play and it’s hilariously funny,” Galati said.

It’s one of the earliest works of the Irish dramatist who has written dozens of plays, including “Translations,” “Molly Sweeney,” “Faith Healer” and the Tony Award-winning “Dancing at Lughnasa.”

Balbot said that in his research he learned that Friel himself didn’t call “Philadelphia Here I Come” an “immigrant play. He didn’t focus on immigration. It was about a boy belatedly becoming a man, a relationship between a father and son not coming to fruition and a love affair that never flowered simply because of incoherence or shyness.”

Galati said that Conn and Balbot may look enough like to be believable as the same person, “but I don’t think they have to be like twins. They do have to have some kind of resemblance, but they’re two completely different personalities.”

As Private Gar, Balbot is “antic, restless, impatient and full of beans,” Galati said. “He manifests a kind of joie de vivre and hope for the future and inhabits a good deal of the suppressed rage and anger that’s inside Gareth O’Donnell.” And Conn plays a young man who is “a little more guarded, more covered, who has to hold things in check.”

That is, until a key scene with his first girlfriend, the one he loved and wanted to marry before she dumped him for a man her parents found more suitable. “That’s when the public Gar for the first time finally goes nuts and Private Gar says calm down.’

“Philadelphia” kicks off a five-show repertory season that will be followed in the next three weeks by Jon Robin Baitz’s Tony-nominated “Other Desert Cities” (opening Jan. 17) and Christopher Durang’s “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” (Jan. 24). The rep will also include Galati’s own Tony-winning adaptation of John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” and Amy Herzog’s off-Broadway hit “4,000 Miles.”

Conn and Balbot, who both will be seen in “Grapes of Wrath” (Conn plays the central role of Tom Joad), said even if they’re not alike and take different approaches to their roles and the characters, “there’s an osmosis that happens naturally around each other,” Conn said. “We were just working one of the sort of dance routines, just doing that sort of work with each other. You pick up the physicality of things. We’re not making a concerted effort to make up the same physical traits, but we are working to have the same dialects.”

THEATER PREVIEWPHILADELPHIA, HERE I COME! Opens Friday and continues in repertory through April 12 at Asolo Repertory Theatre, 5555 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota. For ticket information; 351-8000; asolorep.org. There will be several Tuesday Talkbacks about the show, and Literary Manager Lauryn Sasso will lead an Inside Asolo Rep program with director Frank Galati and other creative artists from the show at 11 a.m. Jan. 29. Tickets are $5.

THEATER PREVIEWPHILADELPHIA, HERE I COME! Opens Friday and continues in repertory through April 12 at Asolo Repertory Theatre, 5555 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota. For ticket information; 351-8000; asolorep.org. There will be several Tuesday Talkbacks about the show, and Literary Manager Lauryn Sasso will lead an Inside Asolo Rep program with director Frank Galati and other creative artists from the show at 11 a.m. Jan. 29. Tickets are $5.

Jay Handelman

Jay Handelman is the theater and television critic for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, where he has worked since 1984. He also is President of the Foundation of the American Theatre Critics Association and a two-time past chairman of the association's executive committee. He can be reached by email or call (941) 361-4931. Follow him at @jayhandelman on Twitter. Make sure to "Like" Arts Sarasota on Facebook for news and reviews of the arts.

Last modified: January 3, 2014
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